360
RICHARD G. STERN
Schlag's building who, according to her, had the habit of stepping
on Mendel's small foot until the latter, after years of the abuse, had
one day grabbed the fellow by the voice box, toppled him, and tried
to throttle him there in the snow of Lexington Avenue. Yes, the huge
woman went on, in some ways, he reminded her of a man she'd
known in Vienna, also a docile young man till seized with rages.
Luckily she mentioned the young man's name, and the detective
wrote her off as a nut. Miss Swindleman, who had listened to her
along with Mendel, shook with anger. There was more history to
come, this time from Sonny, the ex-furniture mover and photographer,
recently returned from his sunny stay in the American Southwest.
Yes, moaned Sonny, his father had raised
him
and his brother on a
diet that would have done in a robot; by the time he was twelve,
he'd eaten enough cabbage soup and kreplach to have felled a
squadron of horses. Also, his father entered into frequent altercations
with a waiter named Bungmeier in Sheffrin's Delicatessen, capped
one day when his father stuffed Bungmeier's gray head into a plateful
of borscht after being rightfully accused of dawdling over his meals.
After all this, Mendel's own story of the day did not look strong.
The story was that Lepidus had been riled by the behavior of the good
Miss Schwindleman. Never was Lepidus a cup of tea, but fired up,
he was a terror. They had worked hard, in shirt sleeves, though it
was drafty, a Christmas cold driving through the peeled window
sidings, never strong since the no-goodnik, Sonny, had pushed the
armchair through them. Lepidus talked, he, Mendel, was all con–
centration. When he designed, he was lost in his materials. Lepidus
had started on Miss Schwindleman: piss-cold, anti-semitischer virgin–
whore were the easiest things he said. (Blushing, head averted from
her stricken head.) Then he was on to the Winthrop, the flea-bag
where he, Mendel, too cheap to waste piss in a pot, had holed himself
up for thirty years, killing his wife with the cold and inflicting two
loonies, the junior Mendels, on the world. "A Hitler with his mouth,
he was," said Mendel to Detective Milligan. "A marketer, he had
talent for the mouth." But he, Mendel, could take it. He was small,
he was old, but he could take it. He kept on cutting his patterns. Not
from cowardice, he was afraid of nobody. He took where it did no
good to do something about it. Years he had taken guff from Miss
Schwindleman. Why not? What could she do, poor old girl-head
averted, lost in his materials-poor old cold bag, full of hate, collecting
